When I have a bit of extra time in my schedule, I like to take online courses to grow my illustration skills. It's easy for my work to start feeling stale to me, but learning something new really helps energize things again. I'm a big fan of all the Make Art That Sells courses which are taught by art agent, Lilla Rogers. I have been taking them since about 2014 and each time I feel rejuvenated and so inspired to keep creating. The courses can be pricy, but in my experience they have always been great investments to make in my business. In addition to insider tips about the industry and very fun portfolio projects, you get to join a Facebook group with other people who are taking the class. That’s always been one of my favorite parts because the sense of community feels so cozy and friendly.
I recently finished up a course about Editorial Design, where we learned about what type of work to have in our portfolios to catch the eye of art directors, how to illustrate icons and abstract concepts like body positivity, how to break into the Editorial market, and tips for what to do when we land projects. Next year my goal is to get more editorial projects (like illustrating for magazines for example), so I was very excited to get to take this class. I feel like it really helped me sort out what exactly I need to do to hopefully achieve this goal soon.
The assignment we were given in this course (to practice illustrating in our own style and to create a good piece for our portfolios) was to illustrate the lyrics of the song “Truth Hurts” by Lizzo. I had heard of Lizzo before the class, but never had listened to her music before. I must say that I’m totally in love with her songs now and I can’t believe I didn’t start listening to her sooner! To me, her music is very empowering and feminist and bad ass. The songs are so catchy too! If you haven’t listened to her yet, I recommend starting with “Truth Hurts,” “Juice,” and “Good as Hell.” Warning, some are explicit so be careful turning up the volume if you are at work!
I really enjoyed working on this illustration. I was pretty intimidated at first to be honest, because I find it hard to illustrate concepts, as opposed to icons or scenes that are more literal. One of the tips that Lilla gave during the class was to read through the lyrics multiple times (as well as listen to the song lots of times of course) and find parts that stand out to you or speak to you the most. For me, that was the part of the song where she sings about never being a side chick. So I wanted to illustrate her looking like a goddess and pushing aside a bunch of “losers” that the song sort of references. At the end of the course we also learned how to create animated GIFs in Photoshop to add simple animation to parts of our illustrations. That was really fun and I want to make everything an animated GIF now!
